Category Archives: Reference Publishing

November 3, 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Safari today announced a strategic partnership that will deliver the next generation in digital reference platforms for students, faculty and librarians.

Wiley Reference Library will combine Safari’s award-winning PubFactory platform with Wiley’s prestigious online reference portfolio. Wiley Reference Library will enhance the visibility and usability of Wiley’s acclaimed reference materials and will include entry portals for key subjects allowing users to search within a subject, within an individual reference work, or across Wiley’s entire reference portfolio. www.wileyreferencelibrary.com will be available in the first half of 2015. Continue reading Wiley and Safari’s PubFactory announce partnership→

October 15, 2014 Aldie, VA– Paratext­­­TM announces that an extensive collection of Data-PlanetTM DataSheets is now indexed, linked, and integrated into Public Documents MasterfileTM. Researchers can now query over 150,000 metadata records representing authoritative publicly and privately sourced datasets.

Libraries who subscribe to both services will link directly from the search results in Public Documents Masterfileto Data-Planet’s DataSheets, which provide a cleanly formatted visual representation of the data, links to the underlying data, and contextual descriptions of the data source, indicator, and dataset from which the indicator derive. Public Documents Masterfileusers not subscribed to Data-Planet will link directly to the DataSheet statistical abstract and citation. Continue reading Paratext completes integration of Data-Planet Datasheets→

Farmington Hills, Mich., October 8, 2014 — New content covering popular healthcare and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) topics is now available on Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL), the e-book platform offered by Gale, part of Cengage Learning. The signing of publishers Taylor & Francis, Mitchell Lane, HCPro and World Scientific combined will add approximately 750 e-books to GVRL, bringing the total number of available titles on the platform to 15,000 from over 150 publishing partners. Continue reading Gale adds four new STEM publishers to GVRL→

Very pleased to see a good colleague of mine (and the first person brave enough to do an interview with me for NSR back in 2008) launch his own digital media company – Mission Bell Media. The web site is beautiful and worth a look and a read, as I’m sure the content will be as well. More from the press release below.

I took the new Britannica research site for a very quick spin. It’s a clean, colorful interface with intuitive icons, links, and features – very easy to navigate. The landing page features three search boxes, each specialized for a different age group (curious if we can choose one as a default depending on our library level). Content is also divided into three reading levels to correspond. Images, videos, recommended web sites, read-aloud, translation, and citation tools are built in. The press release below has more information. Nice job, Michael and everyone else at EB.

To commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War, the OED is revising a set of vocabulary related to, or coined during, the war. Part of the revision process involves searching for earlier or additional evidence, and for this we need the help of the US public. OUP is gathering all contributions on the OED appeals website.

From OUP, “Our first quotations are often from newspapers and magazines, and we know that there may well be earlier evidence in less-easily-accessible sources such as personal letters, soldiers’ diaries, and government records, many of which are now being made available in digital form for the first time. We are hopeful the public can help find earlier evidence for the use of some wartime words?”

This was announced several weeks ago, but I missed it. It looks intriguing with the audio recordings, maps showing the regional distribution of words, and social media aspects. 100 terms available for free preview. If you are snowed in today, take a look at hooky bob.

Cambridge, Mass. The Dictionary of American Regional English, the authoritative record of American speech, is now available online, Harvard University Press has announced. Combining tens of thousands of entries and maps drawn from DARE’s six print volumes with such previously inaccessible data as survey results and audio recordings, daredictionary.com offers users a variety of powerful tools to explore the wealth and complexity of American English. Continue reading Dictionary of American Regional English Debuts Online→

Earlier today Gale/Cengage announced a new business model for the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL). The model is “Usage-Driven Acquisition” (UDA) and is based on evidence-based decisions – you only buy what you use. The press release states, “Unlike options currently offered by other e-book providers, this new purchase model will allow libraries to purchase e-books based on actual usage, allowing libraries to perform evidence-based collection development.”

The model works like this:

1. DEPOSIT. Deposit your funds with Gale.
2. ACCESS. Post a link and widget for GVRL to your website.
3. USE. We’ll pull your usage and let you know which titles were used most.
4. OWN. Your funds will be applied to the titles used most.

September 5, 2013, Boston, Oxford – Credo, the industry leader for information skills solutions, has launched 19 new and updated Subject and Publisher Collections, adding to the more than 80 collections currently available for perpetual purchase or subscription.

Credo’s new collections help librarians grow their reference shelves through their Literati or Credo Online Reference Service solutions. The newly released collections include:

One of my favorite sources, CQ Researcher, is celebrating it’s 90th anniversary! SAGE is honoring this long standing resource with a new interface and a new feature – Hot Topics. The Hot Topics section should hit the target for many English Composition research papers. More from the press release below:

Los Angeles, CA (June 24, 2013) SAGE and CQ Press are delighted to celebrate the 90th anniversary of CQ Researcher, a weekly in-depth, single-topic publication focusing on today’s most important issues. Founded in 1923 as Editorial Research Reports, CQ Researcher is the go-to, authoritative resource for librarians, high school and college students, and researchers seeking high-quality research on domestic and global topics. To celebrate the anniversary, CQ Press is launching an enhanced interface and exciting new content features. Continue reading CQ Researcher celebrates 90 years with a new interface and Hot Topics launch→